How Do the Institutions of Democracy Devolve?

(Not All By Themselves)

All institutions are liable, over time, to become out of step with broader needs - if only because institutions (by their nature) have a bias towards stability and consistency.  

Another factor is what Steve Jobs colorfully termed "Bozo-fication".  As institutions age, individuals cycle in and out of an institution's functional defining roles.  Sometimes this new blood is exactly who’s needed to enable institutional adaptations to changing environments.  Sometimes not.  

Institutions can also grow in size and complexity.  A growth in size almost always requires an increase in complexity - if only for purposes of coordination and control.  The addition of new roles and functions also generally increases both size and complexity.  

Size and complexity tend to generate their own problems and unintended consequences, not the least of which is the development of sets of informal subcultures.  Sometimes the informal cultures of an organization militate high levels of dedication or even zeal.  But sadly, they often merely entrench varying levels of careerism, hackery, time serving, and self serving.  These types of dysfunction are often justified justified (if not celebrated) by appeals to an institutions original mission and ideals.  When this type of Bozo-fication takes hold, guiding ideals can begin to seem like empty slogans, hypocritical cant, or high minded dishonesty that invite mockery and breed cynicism.

But these well studied institutional/organizational dynamics are only a part of the story.

It makes no sense to analyze any institution without looking at class - meaning the rewards system and the distribution of control over vital concentrations of resources within a society.

The political and governmental institutions of the US are subject to the intrinsic ailments of any institution.  But they are also part of our class system and are acutely responsive to pressures from those elements of society who control vital concentrations of resources.  In our society, this latter group can best be understood as an "idiot elite (0.1%)" with the word "idiot" used in its classical sense from Athenian democracy where "idiots" were simply "citizens" who spurned their duties to the community in favor of private pursuits.

Reflexive hostility and contempt for government is an especially idiotic stance when it is loudly proclaimed as well as insidiously permeated into our culture by those with the resources to do so.  It's absurdly idiotic when those "Masters of Mankind" are the primary beneficiaries of government policies that help them accumulate ever more control over more and more of society's resources.

The sad truth is that our government is dysfunctional to a large extent because the top 01% of our class system believe that such a  "state of affairs" is beneficial to their blinkered interests.  That is what makes income and wealth inequality the central issue of our time along with anthropogenic climate change (not that the two issues are unrelated).